Review: “A Killing in the Hills” focuses on beleaguered West Virginia town

Journalist Julia Keller’s first mystery, “A Killing in the Hills,” superbly evokes the hard times and wooded beauty of a poverty-stricken county in West Virginia. That strong sense of place and history adds heft to the crime-centered plot, an exhaustive investigation into the triple murder that opens the book.

A squinty-eyed young killer enters a local restaurant and pops off three shots — dropping three old men as they laugh over coffee — then departs, his unlikely marksmanship the only false note in the book. Witnesses include county prosecuting attorney Bell Elkin’s teenage daughter, Carla, whose prickly, eye-rolling, defensive point of view will be instantly recognizable to mothers of adolescent daughters everywhere.

A fiercely dogged prosecutor of anyone arrested in the hugely profitable prescription drug trade that has engulfed rural West Virginia, Bell has opponents in the community who wish she would back off just a little. She also has a harrowing past in the very town, Ackers’ Gap, where she has returned to be county attorney. That past includes a somewhat shallow ex-husband and a couple of strong local friendships, including one with the longtime sheriff, Nick Fogelsong, who helped when her childhood imploded.

A roster of other nicely realized characters crowds the pages as Bell follows leads into rural pockets of rusted trailers and collapsing cabins, soon becoming a target herself. Keller keeps the tension taut without gimmicks, grounding her story in the surrounding beleaguered community with a depth of commitment unusual for the genre. The result is a finely written and engrossing debut.